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Sugar and Slate by Charlotte Williams
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Sugar and Slate

Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Length 9 hours 4 minutes
Language English
Narrators Bernadine Evaristo & Zadeiah Campbell-Davies

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Brought to you by Penguin.

A powerful, intimate memoir from writer and academic Charlotte Williams exploring the intertwined history of Wales, Africa and the Caribbean


As the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, Charlotte Williams's childhood world was one of mixed messages dominated by the feeling that 'somehow to be half-Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all.'

Sugar and Slate tells the fascinating story of her journey of self-discovery, from the small north Wales town of her birth to Africa, the Caribbean and back to Wales. This is both a personal memoir and a story that speaks to the wider experience of mixed-race Britons. It is a story of Welshness and a story of Wales and above all a story for those of us who look over our shoulder across the sea to some other place.

A title in the Black Britain: Writing Back series - selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books depicting black Britain that remap the nation.

©2023 Charlotte Williams (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Charlotte Williams OBE is a Welsh-Guyanese award-winning author, academic and cultural critic. Her writings span academic publications, memoir, short fiction, reviews, essays and commentaries. She is Emerita Professor at Bangor University and a member of the Learned Society of Wales. Her writings have taken her on travels worldwide but her heart and her home are always in Wales.

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Reviews

In this moving and thought-provoking book, Charlotte Williams demonstrates how global histories impact our most intimate spaces and acts. Linking the histories of Africa, South America and rural Wales, it is an unforgettable account of a search for belonging and identity A bona-fide classic . . . The books’ relevance today is undimmed and undiminished . . . Sugar and Slate is animated by vivid glimpses of daily life and the wider culture of all of the places along Williams’ life-route, with pulsing, bravura writing about dances in Georgetown An engaging and perceptive voice describing an engrossing and particular personal story I loved this book . . . Williams pushes us to ask what 'Welsh' means, what Guyanese means, as much as her luminous words and intricate structure force a deeper understanding of 'classic' Presenting a hidden but very real face of Britishness that feels esoteric yet relatable at the same time, Sugar and Slate is an amalgamation of education and entertainment personified A wonderful memoir-cum-polemic . . . it is the wit and sagacity that Williams brings to her anecdotes that makes her writing so greatly fulfilling ‘One of the most arresting memoirs I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading . . . Charlotte Williams reveals lesser-known Welsh history alongside sharing an un-put-down-able account of her journey through dislocation and otherness to self-hood Charlotte Williams' thought-provoking and beautiful memoir Sugar and Slate comes back to the fore to retell an ever-pertinent tale of twentieth century multi-ethnic Britain Charlotte’s observations and descriptions in Sugar and Slate are highly original and her writing nothing less than brilliant An imaginative expansion of the autobiographical form Expand reviews
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